Some Muslim families choose Islamic State rather than Turkey

(Photo: REUTERS / Ahmed Jadallah)A displaced woman from the minority Yazidi sect, who fled violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, worships at their main holy temple in Lalish in Shikhan September 20, 2014. Followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, the Yazidi fled their homeland in the Sinjar mountains as Islamic State militants, who see them as devil worshippers, seized towns and carried out mass killings in August.

The Islamic State extremist group is known for its merciless killings, yet some families from Turkey who sun a secular way of life are dropping everything to stay under its rule.

The Associated Press reported that more and more devout families from the modern and prosperous country of Turkey are packing their bags to be part of the Islamic State caliphate it is trying to set up.

Asiya Ummi Abdullah, a 24-year-old Muslim convert who brought her son into the group's territory said that living under Shariah, the Islamic legal code, assures that her boy's spiritual life is secure.

"Who says children here are unhappy?" she said.

Ummi Abduallah said her decision to move is to shield her 3-year-old son from the sex, crime, drugs, and alcohol rampant in Turkey.

BBC reported, however, on September 24, about an unmarried Yazidi woman unmarried woman in her early twenties, who agreed to tell her horrific story of being held and tortured by IS.

"The beat us with cables, starved us and made us wash our faces with petrol," she says. "They tried to take one of my friends and she slit her wrists. Two others hanged themselves from the ceiling fans."

She got away during air strikes targeting IS and walked for three days to find safety. Now she worries for those she left behind.

"They will sell girls to whoever wants to buy them - girls aged nine and over," she says. "Some men bought two or three, even four or five at once. It's shameful."

And that reminder is too much for the woman's aunt. She has two small daughters who are missing. She begins to slap her cheeks and wail.

"It's a disaster, a disaster," she cries. "They took all our girls. It's all we care about. The world must help us."

But from the other side a recent video promoting the Islamic State as a "family friendly" State shows Muslim fighters cuddling their children in Raqqa against a backdrop of an amusement park defying their image as merciless killers.

A man, identified as Abu Abdurahman al-Trinidadi, holds an infant who has a toy machine gun strapped to his back says, "Look at all the little children...they're having fun."

Like Ummi Abduallah, many others in Turkey went to the Islamic State's territory to call it their new home. According to opposition legislator Atilla Kart, more than 50 families left Turkey earlier in September.

"It's about fundamentalism," said Han, a professor of international relations at Istanbul's Kadir Has University. The group's "uncompromising interpretation of Islam promises parents the opportunity to raise their children free from any secular influence."

He also regards the place as a "false heaven" where it poses to be a conducive place to practice and live out one's religion.

The Islamic State group's reputation of uprooting hundreds of thousands of people and executing mass killings and beheadings may have raised criticisms even from fellow Muslims, but none of that matters to the likes of Ummi Abdullah.

"The blood and goods of infidels are halal," he said reinforcing his belief that Islam sanctions the killing of unbelievers.